The Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED) continues with the series dedicated to the most notable academicians of its centenary history and dedicates this 18th installment to the second of the presidents it has had since its founding in the early 20th century. This is Pedro Gerardo Maristany y Oliver, count of Lavern, who held the position of dean-president of the original Association of Registered Doctors of Catalonia between 1921 and 1926. Another of the great figures of science and thought that have been part of the RAED and that the current Governing Board wants to thank, acknowledge and claim, in the conviction that who has no memory, has no future. The selection of these select academics, from all fields of knowledge, is the result of research carried out for the publication of the “Book of the Centenary” of the Royal Academy, published three years ago. Personalities that transcend their historical context to appear today as referents of knowledge.
Portrait of Dr. Pedro Gerardo Maristany and Oliver
Born in the Barcelona municipality of Subirats in 1863 in a well-off family, Maristany decided to exploit his academic vocation with family approval and studied the careers of Exact Sciences and Physical-Chemical Sciences and stood out as a driver of primary, secondary and university education before devoting to family business and entering politics, which would lead him to be elected deputy and senator for the province of Barcelona, in addition to assuming the presidency of the Athaenuem of Barcelona when he was already an academician of the Association of Doctors. His work earned him the granting of the title of first count of Lavern by Spanish King Alfonso XIII. After the death of the first president, Álvaro Esquerdo, he was appointed by acclamation his successor at the head of the institution.
Personal friend of the King, Maristany got the monarch interested in the Association and honored it with his visit in 1925, in a solemn act that took place in the Auditorium of the University of Barcelona. It was the first real visit that the institution received in its long history just a decade after its foundation. The second president also promoted a determining fact for the future of the institution: his conversion into the College of Registered Doctors of the University District of Barcelona through the Royal Order, dated March 10, 1924. A fact that would formalize its activity through ministerial recognition.
Defender of territorial cohesion in both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, Maristany also promoted the integrating role of the College of Doctors and put it as a model for the promotion of the College of Doctors of Madrid. In just five years of office, the second president of the institution managed to place it as a pioneer and prestigious entity in the academic field.
Members of the Governing Board of the College of Doctors. In the first row, on the left, the dean Earl of Lavern; in the center, Ignacio Bauer, founder of the Academy of Doctors of Madrid, and on the right, Guillermo de Benavent, secretary of the College of Doctors.
